In 1999, the Nigerian Government hired Mr Enrico Monfrini, a Swiss lawyer to recover the Abacha loot.

After a successful negotiation by Monfrini, the recovered money was domiciled with the Attorney-General of Switzerland pending the signing of an MoU with Nigeria to avoid the issues of accountability that trailed previous recoveries.

All that was left after the signing of the MoU was a government-to-government communication for the money to be repatriated to Nigeria.

However, Abubakar Malami, the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, later engaged the services of another set of lawyers in 2016 for a fee of about N6 billion (16.9 million dollars).